As soon as the commanding officers saw the trouble, they ordered that the cartridges be withdrawn—but the mischief was done.
The Mutiny which flared up here among the native soldiers spread quickly from city to city. Runners went from camp to camp, urging that they throw off the hated British yoke. In some places no written or verbal message was exchanged. A basket of unleavened cakes was brought in and broken, by way of prearranged signal.
After the first outbreaks, councils of war were hurriedly held on the part of the British officers, and field expeditions organized. One of the officers, Colonel Neville Chamberlain, was assigned to the command of what was called the "Movable Column," or chief army of pursuit.
Roberts was made one of his staff officers—"the most wonderful piece of good fortune that could come to me," he says. Shortly afterward, Chamberlain was made Adjutant General to the Army before Delhi, and then came orders for all the artillery officers to join in this attack. Roberts was to see active service at last.
He found himself under fire at Delhi for the first time on June 30, 1857.
While it was only a skirmish it was a lively one while it lasted.
With some 1,100 men and a dozen guns, Major Coke went on an expedition against a troublesome group of rebels, and Roberts accompanied him as a staff officer. When the enemy appeared the only way to reach them in time was by crossing a swamp. Another troop of rebels unexpectedly appeared in force, but were put to rout.
A few days later, a similar skirmish occurred, which for a time looked more serious. Roberts was posted across a road with a squad of men and two guns. The enemy attacked them with a cross-fire. How he and his band escaped is a mystery.
During their enforced retreat, Roberts felt a stinging sensation in his back, but managed to keep going. It was found afterwards that his life had been saved by the slipping of his knapsack down from his shoulders. This had been penetrated by a bullet, which had entered his body close to his spine. Its force had been broken, but the wound was still so severe as to lay him up for several weeks.
The almost superhuman difficulties which lay in the path of this handful of Englishmen scattered throughout India, are summed up in a letter by another officer, Hodson, as follows:
"The whole country is a steaming bog. I keep my health wonderfully, thank God! in spite of heat, hard work and exposure; and the men bear up like Britons. We all feel that the Government ought to allow every officer and man before Delhi to count every month spent here as a year of service in India. There is much that is disappointing and disgusting to a man who feels that more might have been done, but I comfort myself with the thought that history will do justice to the constancy and fortitude of the handful of Englishmen who have for so many weeks—months, I may say—of desperate weather, amid the greatest toil and hardship, resisted and finally defeated the worst and most strenuous exertions of an entire army and a whole nation in arms—an army trained by ourselves, and supplied with all but exhaustless munitions of war, laid up by ourselves for the maintenance of the Empire. I venture to aver that no other nation in the world would have remained here, or have avoided defeat had they attempted to do so."